


Pure Imagination

by Elvendork



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dreams, M/M, ish, not figment-of-character's-imagination dreams, probably not what you think, shut up elvendork stop rambling in the tags, sort of premonition dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlos is five years old, he dreams of impossible wonders. More than thirty years later, he realises they were not so impossible after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pure Imagination

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Willy Wonka song. Which I do not own. Nor do I own WTNV.
> 
> Just a bit of a random/weird ficlet that occurred to me today. 
> 
> ~~Well I had to fill the time waiting for Sherlock series 3 with _something_ , didn't I?~~

When Carlos is five years old, he dreams of impossible wonders. He dreams of dinosaurs and dragons and portals to other worlds. It never occurs to him that such things do not exist, at least not anymore.

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When Carlos is seven years old and devouring every story he can lay his eager hands on, he dreams he is teaching a spider to read. Even after he wakes, it is several minutes before it registers that this is an unlikely scenario.

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At eleven, Carlos’s lifelong curiosity is finally beginning to coalesce into a definite, if vague, career plan and his dreams are populated by all the trappings of a child’s perception of that indefinable miracle, _science_. There are beakers and humming electrical equipment and radiation and stars and the endless stretch of enormous, fascinating, unreachable space.

00000

At twelve, Carlos’s grandfather dies, and he dreams of angels.

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Three years later, on his fifteenth birthday, Carlos dreams of a voice. It is a dream he will have many times in the years to come, but he will never be able to properly describe the sound of the voice when he wakes. He will remember it vividly, would be able to recognise it anywhere, better even than his own. But it defies description.

It is never accompanied by a face, except once, the last time he ever has the dream, but that will not be for over twenty years yet, and the face – though not the voice, never the voice – will fade from his memory as soon as he opens his eyes.

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At sixteen, Carlos dreams of a kiss.

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At twenty three, he dreams of ground-breaking scientific discovery and daring risks and heroic rescues that are somehow all connected, because he still has a child’s heart, really. He still carries his innocent enthusiasm for the world like a talisman where all his friends are beginning to get bogged down in commercialism and boredom and bureaucracy. He still believes, somehow, that all these things are possible, in the same way he did when he was five and dreaming of dinosaurs. His dreams of discovery are not limited to…well. They are not limited.

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At twenty five, he is working on his PhD, and he has no time for dreaming.

The occasional one sneaks in anyway.

They usually feature The Voice.

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At twenty six Carlos is tired, and lonely, and he dreams of lazy days and comfortable beds and long lie-ins.

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Twenty seven and with deadlines looming, his dreams are filled by ticking clocks and days that run faster than they should and then slower, and none of the timepieces are real.

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Thirty four. His childish fascination is waning. He is waiting. Searching. None of his research is as satisfying as he thought it would be.

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Thirty five. The Voice is more of a life-line than a dream has any right to be.

Then he finds a real life-line. A real opportunity.

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Thirty six. The battle for funding commences.

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Thirty seven. He has his last dream of The Voice, and spends the next year missing it in a way he shouldn’t have believed possible for something that never existed in the first place.

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Thirty eight.

He isn’t sure if his grin is from excitement or embarrassment or plain disbelief.

None of this is real.

It can’t be.

It _can’t_.

It’s wonderful. It’s terrifying.

It’s perfect.

It is literally everything he has ever dreamed of.

00000

He isn’t dreaming anymore. Not like he used to, anyway.

Either that, or he is dreaming all the time.

He finds he doesn’t really mind which it is, as long as it never stops.

00000

It takes an entire year for Carlos to accept this new reality.

This reality that is not new at all, because he has dreamed of it his whole life.

It takes an entire year for Carlos to believe, really believe, that any of it is really, _really_ , real.

It is horrifying and perilous and totally, completely, utterly impossible.

It is everything he has ever wanted.

There are dinosaurs.

There are dragons. Well – there is _a_ dragon, and while he is not exactly what five year old Carlos had in mind, thirty nine year old Carlos thinks it probably still counts.

There are ghosts. Portals. Angels. Illiterate tarantulas.

There are things Carlos would never – could never – have imagined before arriving in Night Vale. At last; at long, long last, he has arrived, and it is as though he has been consciously waiting for it for over three decades. As though he was never quite complete until he found it. As though he belongs here, now. As though he always did.

There are tiny cities and hooded figures and houses that don’t exist.

There is radiation and there are stars and there is void.

There is _science_.

But most of all – always, _always_ most of all – there is The Voice.

The Voice’s name is Cecil, and Carlos remembers his face now.

Carlos will always remember his face.

 

 


End file.
